Quiet the Mind, Open the Heart: A Phenomenological Approach to Reading Indigenous Literatures for Non-Indigenous Readers
| dc.contributor.author | Bartlett, R. Allana | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-09-08T12:13:12Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-09-08T12:13:12Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-09 | |
| dc.description.abstract | In Canada, a growing body of Indigenous Literatures is weaving narrative threads of Indigenous worldviews into settler consciousness adding complexity and clarity, vibrancy and depth, to our collective tapestry. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada urged all to think and act in new ways to establish and maintain mutually respectful relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Peoples. To think and act in new ways is, in essence, to transform. Given the power of story to tell, teach, and transform, Indigenous Literatures may be an accessible and pragmatic means for people of settler ancestry to initiate engagement in reconciliation, decolonization, and treaty relations. This was the impetus for a phenomenological exploration of transformative learning in settler readers of Celia’s Song by Sto:lo author Lee Maracle (2014), first as a solitary reader and then as a member of an established book club. Hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry extends beyond descriptive understanding to interpret aspects of experience that are externally observable, as well as aspects of experience revealed only through the narrative an individual composes as the product of the phenomenon and their lifeworld. Seven adult readers of settler ancestry provided four points of access to the lived experience: 1) one-on-one interviews to explore the reading lifeworld of each participant as the context in and through which they live and subjectively structure their reading experiences; 2) reading journals to document the intellectual, emotional, and embodied experience of reading; 3) observations and audio recording of the book club discussion to capture the relational reading experience; and, 4) one-on-one interviews to explore the overall experience as reflected on by each participant. All gathered materials were transcribed to text and underwent iterative cycles of reading, reflecting, and writing to dwell in the individual and collective experience of reading Celia’s Song. The research process revealed engagement with Celia’s Song as one of reading as reckoning rather than reconciliation for most of the reader-participants. One reader, however, formed an intention to approach the story and the storytelling by quieting her settler-colonial mind and being open to the content and the broader social and cultural context of the text. The reading approach mirrored the phenomenological research approach used in the study and suggests a framework for settler readers to engage with Indigenous Literatures as reader-witnesses. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://ec.msvu.ca/handle/10587/2354 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Mount Saint Vincent University | |
| dc.title | Quiet the Mind, Open the Heart: A Phenomenological Approach to Reading Indigenous Literatures for Non-Indigenous Readers | |
| dc.type | Thesis |